Tolfa (a town of approximately 5,000 inhabitants in the volcanic Tolfa mountains, Metropolitan City of Rome. 40km north of Civitavecchia, 80km northwest of Rome) sits in the middle of the most specifically wild landscape in Lazio: the Monti della Tolfa (the volcanic massif of trachyte and tuff that rises between the Tyrrhenian coast and the Tiber valley, covered in oak and chestnut woodland with the specific Maremma character of an unsettled, unpopulated landscape where the semi-wild Maremmana cattle still graze under the supervision of the butteri, the Italian cowboys of the coastal pastoral tradition) is the territory that produces the specific Tolfa identity: a hill town embedded in a landscape that hasn't been transformed by intensive agriculture or tourism development, where the medieval alum mines (the Tolfa alum deposits, discovered in 1461 and exploited by the papacy as a monopoly that funded the Vatican treasury for over a century) have left abandoned mine galleries in the hillside and a specific mining industrial heritage that is the most unusual economic history of any small Lazio town.
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Tolfa: Key Dimensions
The Alum Mine History
The Tolfa alum (potassium aluminium sulfate, the mineral essential to the medieval textile industry as a mordant for fixing dyes to cloth, before the Tolfa discovery imported from Anatolia at prices that the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had made prohibitively expensive and politically difficult) was discovered in 1461 by Giovanni da Castro, who is said to have recognized the Tolfa vegetation as similar to the Anatolian alum territories. Pope Pius II immediately recognized the strategic and economic significance: the Tolfa mines would break the Ottoman monopoly on Mediterranean alum and fund the papal treasury from a domestic source. The papacy established the Tolfa alum monopoly (operated by the Medici bank as the exclusive commercial agent) and used the revenues to fund the crusade against the Turks, a crusade that never actually departed, but the Tolfa alum revenues funded several decades of Vatican operations.
The Butteri and the Maremma Landscape
The butteri (the Maremma cowboys, the mounted herdsmen who have managed the semi-wild Maremmana cattle and Maremma horse herds of the Tolfa mountains and the coastal Maremma since the medieval period) are the most specifically Italian expression of the global pastoral horseman tradition. The specific Tolfa buttero: works with the traditional equipment (the mezzamanica, the long cattle goad, distinctive from the South American gaucho and American cowboy lasso-based techniques), manages the Maremmana Bianchi (the large white cattle breed of the central Italian coastal pastoral zone), and participates in the specific Tolfa horsemanship tradition that includes the disfida dei butteri (the Tolfa butteri challenge, the periodic competition of traditional skills). The Tolfa countryside is accessible for horseback riding through the local equestrian operators who use the former grazing lands for trail riding in the Maremma style.
Q&A: Tolfa
What is the best time to visit Tolfa?
Spring (April-May) and autumn (September-October) for the Maremma landscape at its best: the spring flowering of the Tolfa hills produces wildflower meadows in the grassland clearings between the oak woodland, while October gives the specific golden light on the chestnut woodland and the first mushroom season. The Tolfa mushroom market (typically October-November, the Maremma woodland is one of the richest porcini territories in Lazio) is the specific autumn event. Summer is hot but the woodland altitude (400-600m) provides moderate temperatures compared to the coast.
